With a nurse aide certification, you will be able to find employment in a variety of medical facilities, such as nursing homes, hospices, hospitals, and health clinics, and be qualified to provide basic patient care. While attending your nursing program courses, you will learn the fundamentals of medically-oriented topics like caring for the elderly, infection and disease control, providing emergency medical assistance, and even psychological issues regarding debilitated individuals. Programs for nurse aid certification can be found at vocational or community colleges and generally last anywhere from several weeks up to several months. Upon successful completion of the program, you will have to take the Nurse Aide Certification Examination and pass both the written and laboratory portions of the test in order to work as a nurse's aide. According to statistics, if you have less than twelve months' worth of on-the-job experience you will probably earn between $21,000 and $30,000. However, that amount will increase as you gain experience and knowledge as a nursing assistant.
Once you become a full-fledged nurse's aide, your name will be put on the Nurse Aide Registry for two years, after which time you will be asked to submit a form which will renew your participation in the Nurse Aide Registry. The form will serve as proof that you have been employed as a CNA for at least eight hours in the past two years, and will also grant you a renewal certificate so that you can continue to work as a qualified CNA. In the event that you have not been able to fulfill these minimal requirements, you will then have to reapply for examination re-testing at an acceptable site.
As an individual awarded with a nurse aid certification, you will have knowledge of how to correctly handle emergency health situations, such as heart attacks or seizures, know how to preform CPR, and give certain medications or injections as directed by the attending registered nurse or physician. Since a nurse aide spends much of his or her time in close contact with patients, they will be acutely aware of the importance of cleanliness and germ control. Hand washing and glove use is critically important when performing your duties as a nursing assistant, as well as maintaining good patient hygiene. Other duties will include proper use and removal of bedpans, cleaning and dressing open wounds or bedsores, feeding patients who cannot feed themselves, making sure that an incapacitated individual's bodily positions are changed regularly in order to prevent muscle stiffness and poor blood circulation, and monitoring vital signs.
Nursing assistants may also work in mental hospitals as psychiatric aides. Instead of working under doctors, LPN's, and RN's, you will be working with psychologists, social workers, and psychiatric nurses. As a psychiatric nursing aide, you will assist patients in normal day-to-day activities, such as personal hygiene, leisure activities, and behavioral issues, and report any observable changes to the attending psychiatric nurse.
Nurse Aide Certification